Help with chocolate curing.

[captain wassname]

After my experiment with a beer cured piece of loin which I cooked 1 chop fried and the rest simmered and turned into ham I am thinking of adding chocolate to the equation in much the same way as I did with my sausages.
The beer ham was good and I have a piece of leg curing at the moment as well as a lump of loin to turn into beery bacon chops.
have used 1.75% salt (inc cure) and 1% sugar.My intention was to go with 0.3% chocolate,which is what I used in my last lot of sausage.
The question is should I sweeten up the cure or not?
I did sweetcure a batch of bacon chops with honey but I dont think it possible to inject beer and honey so it would need to be extra sugar maybe muscavado,Any thoughts?

Jim

[BriCan]

Jim, for what its worth most of my cures with sugar base are equal 1/1 and so forth up the scale. If you look at viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6620&p=57476&hilit=suffolk+cure#p57476 and note the treacle, (sweet) juniper berries (sweet) and also the beer I did not nor them that tried it find it 'overly' sweet ~~ flavorful; yes

I would if using a dark unsweeten chocolate and a darker (?) beer even a lighter one ~~ then I would add more sugar ~~ muscavado

My other thoughts are if the problem with beer/honey mix is hard to inject would it not be possible to infuse/cook brine as I did for the Suffolk ham/bacon ~~~ thoughts ?

[captain wassname]

Sorry Robert I have been out of touch for a bit so you think if I add chocolate which is bitter then a bit more sweetener would be favourable.
Since Im adding 0.3% chocolate Ill add the same amount of sugar.
Out of interest do you cure your ham and bacon sweeter than I because you are smoking yours.

Jim

[BriCan]

Sorry Robert I have been out of touch for a bit so you think if I add chocolate which is bitter then a bit more sweetener would be favourable.Since Im adding 0.3% chocolate Ill add the same amount of sugar.

Depending on the 'sweetness' of the beer that you will be using (and your spice combination) I would be tempted to add a tad more sugar as you have suggested

Out of interest do you cure your ham and bacon sweeter than I because you are smoking yours.

To be totally honest I do it to combat the salt ~~one Ayrshire bacon spice (out of Glasgow University) I use uses 500 gm of salt to 50 gm of sugar plus spices. I leave it down for more than 5 days the bacon will be salty the Irish I do is a 50/50 mix of salt and sugar, I can leave this (Iris bacon)down for 2 weeks with no apparent problems with being too salty.

Smoking only in my opinion adds another depth/layer of flavour the same as aging/maturing bacon or ham smoked or unsmoked

Make pea (or any other) soup and by accident add too much salt, the taste can be rectified (most of the time) by adding sugar to combat the saltiness of the soup.

It's the same as spices knowing what will complement/work with each other ~~ sweetness, spicy, tart, or aromatic. I was surprised to see on one sausage forum where the discussion of the differences of nutmeg and mace in a sausage mix. It seems that the consensus was that they was the same (taste) even tough one was seed and the other was shell and because one could not get mace it was safe (taste wise) to double up on the nutmeg ~~ problem there is that nutmeg is sweet and mace is/has some heat

Sorry about that, probably gone on more than I should again

[captain wassname]

I made my first beer sausages with a homebrew that contained some peat smoked barley.Twas an interesting drink and I quite enjoyed it but needed to change after 4 or 5.
It was great in sausages.After I ran out I used commercial beers both dark.
When I added chocolate I moved to lighter beers (colour not abv) the first was a german abbey beer and the second was Coniston Brewery blacksmith.
These went well with the chocolate and I made no other changes to the recipe.The amount of chocolate I have used is 0.3% and this has given the sausage a different flavour but not really a chocolatey taste.Its hard to explain a bit like you can taste something but not be too sure quite what it is.
The two beer hams I have made are just salt sugar and beer with some crushed black pepper left in for a day
I must say that my liking for smoked food is confined to fish.A bit strange if I like one thing smoked,why not another.

Jim